Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

Declarations of Independence.

First, Daniel Shorr: Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.

That word, misled, stands out for me.

We were misled into Vietnam, too. Wikipedia: In August of 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese forces had fired on two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this incident to increase American involvement in Vietnam; this incident led to the open involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

I'm old enough to remember the whole thing well. The Johnson Administration lied our way into the Vietnam war, plain and simple. Millions died, unnecessarily, including more than 50,000 Americans, some of whom I knew.

At that second link...

Historians have shown that the Johnson administration provoked the incident with the intention of crafting a pretext for making overt the American covert involvement in Vietnam.

Immediately after the incident, President Lyndon Johnson called upon Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which effectively authorized the president to begin the American escalation of the Vietnam War.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution is a case study of the de facto powers of the President of the United States, which transcend his de jure Constitutional powers. Although the Constitutional power to declare war is vested solely the U.S. Congress, the president has the power to send the army anywhere he chooses so long as he does not make a formal declaration of war.

Who allowed this to happen? Why?

Two incidents from this morning. One was a story on NPR's Morning Edition: Nebraskans Offer Thoughts on Next High Court. Now, I don't know if the story was an example of the new "fair and balanced" NPR; but ever since the service became a target of political correction by the Bush Administration, that's been my suspicion whenever I hear a feature like this one.

I've never doubted NPR's left-leaning nature. But I also never doubted its independence [~] at least from the kind of direct political pressure it's been receiving since Kenneth Tomlinson became Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a kind-of umbrella organization for NPR and its TV sister, PBS. Now I doubt it, every day. The voices are the same, but the service has changed. It is no longer independent. Sure, maybe the differences are small, but they are also significant: too significant to ignore.

The second incident was a conversation with Chris Nolan, whose downbeat conclusions about the Rove/Plame matter I quoted yesterday. Specifically, Chris said, Things aren't going to be any different for Novak. Or Rove. Or politics in general. It's sad, really. But it's the way things are in the tiny insular village of Big Media and Serious Politics.

I wanted cause for optimism. Things are deeply screwed in the BigGov-Media complex, sure; but what about elsewhere? To my relief and surprise, she was optimistic; not about the old media, but about the new. Specifically, about independent (and, to use her own term, "stand-alone") voices. She's doing a lot, with other voices as well as her own. (I'll leave the details for her to explain in her own way). Just listening to her talk about new independent voices, and how they'll grow as a force in the marketplace, gave me enormous encouragement.

The key factor is independence. It's what our country declared on the 4th of this month in 1776, and it's what each of us declares by not being part of the old system, and by gradually building, and rebuilding, a new system for reporting and interpreting events and issues of importance in the world.

This isn't about redistribution of power. It's about the creation of new power like we've never seen before.

Okay, now I can leave this Holiday Inn lobby in Long Beach (off the 405 near the airport), thank them publicly for their free wi-fi (not even a splash screen [~] I love it), and drive on home. See ya there.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]
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NASA Veteran Weighs In on Launch. Former NASA flight director Gene Kranz, of Apollo 13 fame, talks about competing with the Soviets, dealing with the failure of a spacecraft and fixing the space agency's problems. By Amit Asaravala. [Wired News]
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